Page 61 of Angel in Absentia
“It’s cursed silver,” he warned, and then returned a blow with the chalice so heavy that it forced her to stumble back. She didn’t have the mind to think through what the warning meant, or what a cut from the knife might do to her.
“What is this about?” she said with so much anger that it echoed through the hallway, swinging the knife in his direction. “You’ve taken my people hostage! You deceived me! You lied about who you were!” She felt like she’d caught fire with emotion and no longer cared what anyone else knew or thought.
Ryson looked honestly offended. “Hostage? I’ve saved them. I haven’t deceived or lied!” He nearly tossed the chalice as he replied with emphatic gestures, “If anything, I was more honest than I ever needed to be.” He gestured at her with the chalice. “You’re the one in denial of all of this when you are just as guilty as I am. We’re partners in all of this, you and I.”
“Partners? In this?” she shouted, hair in disarray, clothes dirtied and disheveled, heart pounding. She wanted to kill him more than she’d ever wanted to hurt anyone else.
All feelings were released at last, every trial and frustration that she’d had to carry now focused with precision on the person in front of her, who seemed more capable of bringing it out of her than any enemy just by existing.
He set the chalice down like a proclamation. “You insisted on being, what did you call it,friends? Despite me explaining quite clearly that we came from different worlds.”
Her expression faltered, and it took her a moment to realize that he was recalling specific details from conversations they’d had at the start of their journey. She’d had so much fondness for those conversations and had replayed them in her mind since, every warm exchange, every barb and joke and protest. In the setting where they stood now, it felt bizarre to hear them.
“You pulled me in to help you in the Kalex village,” he added. “You patched up my wounds after. You—” He paused, small bits of emotion working into his voice in a surprising way. “You healed me at the risk of your own life. I don’t understand what this is about. Is it about your recent losses? That I understand, or the betrayal of your prince? Look, here.”
He swept an arm back, and the entire room seemed to startle at once as he ripped Idan through a portal and yanked a knife to his throat.
Idan gurgled a loud scream of muffled, animal-like terror. Clea nearly dropped her knife.
“Do you want me to kill him?” Ryson asked urgently as he shook Idan once. “I’ll kill him.”
“What—wh—” Idan jerked and gurgled in shock.
“Let him go!” she shouted fervently, and Ryson shoved him forward back through another opening rift. He was gone.
Clea blinked, hardly digesting what had just happened.
“What is it?” he pushed, as if Idan had never been there in front of him, and Clea could only continue on, her brain jolted by the bizarre nature of her circumstances.
“You killed Myken!” she declared, floundering for more accusations.
“Ha!” he barked. “Really? He was waiting for the chance to turn on you for his own advantage. You would have kept him in your cellars as a pet for the rest of your life, unable to put him down. I found him scrounging around the woods with silver eyes, trying to impersonate us.”
“He was one of you, thanks to your talismans!”
“That’s just a prerequisite. We cull them at the door,” Ryson shot back.
“I can’t believe it,” she whispered, shaking her head. “This is it. This is you. I deluded myself. I deluded myself into caring about you. I’m mad!”
“You’re perfectly mad,” he replied with a contented smile, and it sounded like a compliment, as if he were pleased they finally agreed on something.
“I didn’t know what I was doing!” she argued back.
“No.” He lifted a finger and then started to approach her, Clea clutching the knife.
“You knew exactly what you were doing, and you made a choice.”
She stepped back as he approached, struggling to maintain the distance between them.
“You felt every wound as you healed it and knew then what I was capable of, but standing in the well of my vacant self, seeing the power and darkness that had once been there, you still decided to heal me and lay down your life,” he replied.
She held the knife out as he stopped at the point, lowering his voice, his eyes intent and focused on her. “You healed an Insednian,” he said, repeating the warning now just as he had in the carriage after she’d woken up. “I warned you what that meant. I told you again what you needed to do to be free from this, but what did you do?”
“I wasn’t just going to let you die,” she snapped. “Who would I be then?”
“Anyone!” he said, throwing his arms out and then gesturing to Dae. “He almost just killed me now, and who could blame him for sanity? You confronted me in King Kartheen’s throne room, saw the carnage all around you, felt the darkness, and when at last you had the medallion, the essence of my very soul gifted into your hands, you didn’t escape. No.”
He fit his hand around the knife as if daring her to withdraw it and cut him. He used it to draw her close until they were face to face. “You risked your life again, and I did the same. Each risk we took on another’s behalf was just another stitch, a prick of an internal thread tying your fate to mine, and mine to yours. I saw it then in perfect chemistry: I’ll kill for you, and you heal for me. It was at the same moment both rare and unavoidable. You felt it then, when I peeled that illness from your bones: the new life you received was not without its ties, no matter how much you wanted to deny it.”
